The Padaung people, or the Kayan Lahwi, hail from Myanmar (then known as Burma) and Thailand. The women of this culture place brass rings around their necks from the age of five giving them the appearance of an elongated neck. As the girls grow, larger coils are placed around their neck, pushing their collar bones down and compressing their rib cages.

While these women are known as "giraffe women," their necks aren't actually lengthened, it just looks like it because of the deformation in the clavicle caused by the neck rings. Anthropologists have surmised that the rings were initially meant to make the women look less attractive to other tribes, but that now they work to make the women more sexually attractive by accentuating their slender necks.

The coils are rarely removed unless they're being replaced by a new version. Urban legend states that the wearer's neck will break after spending years in the ring. While the muscles in a Padaung woman's neck do grow weak, the only thing that happens once the rings are removed is a slight discomfort that goes away after a week or so.

As far as we can tell, these Padaung women were in England as a part of a Carnival where they were most likely appearing in its oddity section or possibly a sideshow, as was common at the time. Other photos from this set show the four women traveling around London while men and women gawk at them, and a shot of a Padaung woman holding her baby while speaking with a police officer in what looks like the "backstage" area at the carnival.

At the time, no one in England would have had any idea that women like this existed unless they were anthropologists, so the population at large was vexed by their very existence. Another photo from the set shows the women waving to Londoners upon their arrival at Victoria Station, and another shows the women being examined by a doctor. The entire photo set has the vibe of "Would you get a load of this?" 

At the time that these photos were taken Myanmar was known as Burma and it had been an English colony for more than 100 years. The "giraffe women" had been known to the English ever since Sir George Scott published his account of the colony in Burma and Beyond. In his writing he referred to the women as "Stiff-Necked Belles," and described their effect on the men they encounter:

It is the get-up of the women that makes the Padaung the best-known of the tribes. In fact this has led lately to their being brought down to Durbars for viceroys and distinguished visitors to look at... Some of the girls are by no means bad-looking, but their formidable armour not unnaturally seems to deter suitors other than the men of their own race.

Scott's writing on Burma was released in 1932, creating a buzz of excitement about these women. The English people just had to see what was going on with the Stiff-Necked Belles of Burma.

After the release of "Burma and Beyond" a group of Padaung women were brought to England from Thailand, one of which was the grandmother of Kayan writer Pascal Khoo Thwe. It's not entirely clear if Thwe's grandmother was one of the women photographed, but her experience closely matches what we can see from the photo set. She and her friends were taken around Europe with the Bertram Mills circus and shown off "as freaks."

Thwe writes that when the women returned home they were just as confounded with England as England was with them. They had a little bit of English money in their pockets for souvenirs and the memories the odd things that they encountered on their travels. To these women, the world outside of what they knew was strange, not frightening. That being said they were happy to return home to their friends and families, to the sights and sounds that made them call the world around them home.